Maxims: communicational norms involved in the reasoning, which makes it possible for the utternance to mean more than what it literally encoded in the sentence.

Quantity: give the right amount of information.

Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true

Relation: be relevant

Manner; be perspicuous

These maxims have the essential role in interpreting conversational implicatures.

Hedges: Hedges can be defined as words or phrases used to indicate that we`re not really sure that what we’re saying is sufficiently correct or complete. ‘Sort of’ or ‘kind of’ such as ‘His hair was kind of long’ or ‘The book cover is sort of yellow’ (rather than ‘It is yellow’). As I far I as I know, now correct me if I am wrong, by the way, anyway well, are also examples of hedges. The use hedges indicated that the speakers are aware of the maxims and want to obey them.

The linguistic meaning of what is said+ The information from the context (shared knowledge)+ The assumption that the people speaking are observing the cooperative principle=Conversational implicature

Implicature interpretation requires both Speaker and Hearer to be collaborative

Ex:

A. I got an A on that exam.

B. And I’m Queen Marie of Rumania.

A. Where did you go?

B. Out.

A: Where does Arnold live?

B: Somewhere in southern California.

Types of implicatures: conventional,conversational :generalized, particularized

Conventional implicatures

•           not based on cooperative principle or maxims

•           encoded in the lexicon or grammar

•           not dependent on context for their interpretations

Ex:

George is short but brave. (contrast)

Sue and Bill are divorced (conjunction)

Coversational implicatures: Inferred via the cooperative principle or maxims (observed, violated or flouted)

 Ex:

A: I am out of petrol.

B: There is a garage around the corner.

 Generalized conversational implicatures : independent of the context

Ex.:

    1. Indefinites

A car ran over John’s foot. (not John’s car / not the

speaker’s car)

the speaker is assumed to follow the maxim of quantity, if he

wanted to be more specific he would have said my car or

John’s car

    1. Scalar implicatures communicated by choosing a word expressing a value from a scale (quantity, frequency, etc.)

I’m studying linguistics and I’ve completed some of

the required courses (not all)

If the scale is all, most, many, some, few...., the use of some implicates that all the higher items in the scale are to be considered negative.

Particularized conversational implicatures: dependent on a specific context

Ex.:

Rick: Hey, coming to the party tonight?

Tom: My parents are visiting. (flouting relevance)

Ann: Where are you going with the dog?

Sam: To the V.E.T. (flouting manner)